Damocles (pronounced dam-uh-kleez)
(1) As "Sword of Damocles", an allusion to the always imminent threats faced by those in in positions of power (classical meaning).
(2) As "Sword of Damocles", any situation
threatening imminent harm or disaster (modern use frowned upon by purists).
Circa 300 BC: From the Ancient Greek name Δαμοκλῆς (Damoklês); like many Greek names, it was a compound from roots chosen for their meaning. The construct was Δᾰ́μῐος (damos or dēmos) (“people” and in this context the sense probably was “common people” + -κλῆς (klēs (from kleos)) (“glory” or “renown”. Kleos was a key concept in Greek heroic culture and underpinned many of the myths, referencing especially the kind of glory or fame remembered after death to become legend. The humble Damocles of the tale was almost certainly apocryphal. Damocles is a proper noun and Damoclean is an adjective; the noun plural formations are swords of Damocles & Damoclean swords. Damoclean is an eponymic adjective (meaning it's formed from a person's name such as Marxist (from Marx), Sisyphean (from Sisyphus), Herculean (from Hercules) Kafkaesque (from Kafka), Lohanic (from Lohan) or Stalinist (from Stalin) and in standard usage, such adjectives retain the capitalization of the name from whence derived unless the wholly has been absorbed into the language as common adjectives (such as “quixotic” or “stoic”).
In mythology
In Classical mythology, Damocles was a sycophantic courtier at the court of King Dionysius II of Syracuse. Damocles was heard to say Dionysius must be very happy living the life of a king and on hearing of this, the ruler offered to let him live like that for a day. Delighted, Damocles accepted and was placed on a throne, attended by servants serving him the finest wines at a most lavish banquet. Hours into the feast, Damocles chanced to look up and saw, just above his head, a razor-sharp dangling sword, suspended by a single strand from the tail of a horse. Shocked at the risk to his life, Damocles asked the king why the blade was there. Dionysius explained it was so Damocles might fully experience the life of a king, including the constant sense of danger powerful people must endure. Damocles asked to be excused from the feast and be allowed to return to his humble station; the king granted his request. The original meaning from Antiquity (the sword symbolizing the constant threats implicit in the possession of power), has in recent years been diluted by misuse, the term often used to refer to any looming threat.
The Sword of Damocles (1831), oil on canvas by Félix Auvray (1800–1833), Museum of Fine Arts, Valenciennes, France. In Cicero's tale, the table is attended by male servants but in art these sometimes are replaced with attractive young ladies, either because the painter preferred the look or at the instigation of whomever commissioned the work.
Long thought apocryphal, legend has it the story was in a lost history of of Sicily by Timaeus of Tauromenium (circa 356–260 BC) and it’s speculated the Roman statesman & scholar Cicero (106-43 BC) may have read it in the works of the (1st century BC) Greek historian Diodorus Siculus for he included it in his Tusculanae Disputationes (Tusculan Thoughts (45 BC)), a five-part treatise of Greek philosophy discussing: the contempt of death; pain; grief; emotional disturbances; and whether virtue alone is sufficient for a happy life). It was from here the phrase entered classical languages, the Roman lyric poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 BC) exploring the theme in the Third Book of Odes (23 BC), noting none could be happy "above whose impious head hangs a drawn sword (destrictus ensis)." It became part of modern European languages after the myths of antiquity were widely published after the Renaissance. William Shakespeare (1564–1616) explored the theme in Henry IV, Part 1 (circa 1596), Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) used the phrase in The Canterbury Tales (1386-1400) and sixteenth & seventeenth century works sometimes explained the story using the words metus est plenus tyrannis (a tyrant is always fearful). During the Cold War, both John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) and comrade Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) described nuclear weapons as Damoclean although JFK was lamenting the threat they posed to humanity whereas comrade Khrushchev was more bullish, telling the West the USSR’s newly tested fifty-plus megaton hydrogen bomb would "hang like the sword of Damocles over the imperialists' heads".
Comrade Khrushchev's Damoclean sword, one of a pair (suspended by the USSR & US) which defined the MAD (mutually assured destruction) doctrine of the high Cold War.
A depiction of 30 October 1961 test of Soviet AN-602 hydrogen bomb (Царь-бомба (Tsar Bomba, known also by the Soviet code names Ivan or Vanya (the Pentagon preferred Tsar Bomb)). The most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated, the design technically was capable of being produced in a form which would have yielded some 100 megatons but the Soviets built it in a smaller scale to (1) reduce the fall-out radius and (2) ensure the bomber would have time to escape the critical blast zone. For a long time the US estimated the yield at 54 megatons and the Russians at 58 but, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was confirmed the true yield was 50-51 megatons. That the 100 megaton test never took place was an indication of change in the Kremlin; comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) would have ordered the bigger bomb built and dropped, the risk of sacrificing one aircraft and its crew an acceptable loss for the impression such a blast would have made on minds in Western capitals. When making a point, comrade Stalin liked to be able to say "They have understood my language".
The phrase “Sword of Damocles” often is misused by those who equate it with just about any kind of threat or even hardship. Correctly, a “Sword of Damocles” references the idea of a constant, looming threat that “hangs over” those in positions of power or privilege; it’s used to highlight the hidden dangers of success. Example of misuse exist from earlier centuries but in recent decades it has become common for the term to be applied to just about any random hardship or threat which may be looming so in that sense it has been re-purposed as a kind of intensifier although most critics conclude such use tends usually to be a misunderstanding. To suggest “the rising price of gas is a Sword of Damocles which hovers over us all” certainly conveys the anxiety which may be induced by a trip to the pump but unless abstracted to absurdity, it’s not describing a personalized or constant threat tied to power or privilege. Nor is it always correct to speak of an imminent (or even inevitable) disaster; the infamous North Atlantic iceberg which Titanic in 1912 struck was not the ship’s sword of Damocles, however much it represented a threat to the rich and famous aboard. It that case, the allusion fails what lawyers would call “the remoteness test” in that what’s required is the ironic and specific juxtaposition of comfort with danger.
In a piece for the HuffPost in 2010, one writer was correct in linking Lindsay Lohan’s life to a sword of Damocles but applied the nature of the connection in a way Cicero didn’t intend. The suggestion a sentence of "...jail, hanging over her head..." would be thought Damoclean would never have occurred to the Greeks or Romans but as it certainly conveyed to the Huff’s readers he life was troubled. Years later, in an interview with London’s The Times at her Mykonos Beach Club, Ms Lohan correctly deconstructed the sword of Damocles which sits ready to drop on figures in what can be the claustrophobic hothouse of celebrity pop-culture: “You have to remember that in LA, I was 19. I lived there for seven years and it was just people, places and things. I had too much money, I was way too young and I had no one around to protect me; just people who wanted to come along for the ride. [There was no social media] you couldn’t control anything yourself. There was just the tabloids, and they were out to get me.” That was it, the relationship between tabloid and starlet can be symbiotic but it’s a knife’s edge existence.
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